Name in lights (or ginormous LCD)

As mentioned within a previous article, Jeff Ray quoted one of my comments about SolidWorks 2010.  He has been using this quote and others by other bloggers for a few months.  It was an honor to have my particular quote appear at SolidWorks World 2010 on the big screen.

Jeff Ray quoting

I was kinda bummed though.  I didn’t have the camera on my phone ready to take a photo, nor did I think about taking a photo until it was too late.  Well, even if I had been able to take the photo, it wouldn’t have been that good.  Several of us bloggers where sitting in the front row, too close to get Ray and the quote in the same frame.

Yesterday, I put out a call on Twitter to see if anyone had taken a photo of the quote.  Gabi Jack almost immediately tweeted that she might have one.  Within 15 minutes, she send over a picture of my name in lights next to Ray.  Thank you, Jack.

Matt Lorono name in lights

Ray stated the quote during the Monday General Session.  This can actually be seen on the video of the Monday General Session (@ minute 47:35) available at their website here.

SolidWorks World 2010 Presentations are now available online

SolidWorks World 2010 presentations are now available online via the SolidWorks World website.  Details about every presentation can be found there.  Videos are available for many of the sessions.  Where videos do not exist, the PowerPoint presentations are usually available for download.  Anyone can view the basic presentation descriptions.  Viewing of the videos or downloading of the PowerPoint presentations requires the visitor to sign in through the customer portal.  Browsing the presentations may be done with four tabs: Presenter, Title, Category, and Weekday.  If you are interested in just videos, there’s an option to filter for those.  There is no search function, though that isn’t needed as far as I can tell so far.  I’ve been able to find sessions fairly quickly.  Also, fortunately, the SolidWorks World 2009 presentations are still available.

At this website, there’s also a SolidWorks blog portal, photos from SolidWorks World 2010, Partner Pavilion information, a convention highlight video.  Have fun exploring:

SolidWorks World 2010 presentations

Deleting a Row from General Table

This question came up on the SolidWorks Forums today and after answering it I thought of sharing it up.

You have inserted a General table in the SolidWorks drawing and accidentally added one extra Row. Now you want to get rid of that line. As usual you’ll right click on the specific Row you want to remove from the table and clicked on the Delete.

But to your surprise, you can only see the option to delete the entire table and no Row. You may feel bit frustrated with that.

Now here comes the trick to delete the Row from the General Table.

1. Click on Table and you’ll see some thing like in the picture below.

2. Click these small arrows to show the Table Header. (Check, the pointer has changed).

3. Your table should like this.

4. Click on the table again.

5. Select/ highlight the Row (by clicking on the number. See the color change). Now right click on the row number, go to Delete and select Row.

6. Hurray, the unwanted Row has gone. If you want to hide the table header, click on the table again. Now click on those small arrows (look at step 2) again and your header will hide.

DWGEditor is going to be renamed

As part of a settlement with Autodesk, SolidWorks Corp has agreed to cease their use of the term DWG in any products or trademarks.  I personally think this settlement was unnecessary.  SolidWorks Corp should’ve taken Autodesk all the way through the legal process to help Autodesk realize the counter-productiveness of their litigious ways.  That said, Autodesk still does not have any legal claim to the file extension .dwg.  This is their holy grail.  Much like the real holy grail, ownership of .dwg is mythological.

The end result of the SolidWorks-Autodesk settlement is that DWGEditor must now be renamed.  What would be come good alternative names for the SolidWorks editor of .dwg files?  Hmm, I wonder.  Here’s some suggestions:

  • .dwgEditor
  • SolidWorks .dwg Editor
  • .dwgWorks
  • DrawingWorks
  • DraughtingWorks
  • Naughty Draughting
  • NaughtyWorks
  • Old School CAD Tool
  • Run Your .dwg Files Here
  • FlatlanderCAD
  • CADland Editor
  • 2DWorks
  • LineWorks
  • XYEditor
  • AutoCAD SuxWorks
  • InfiniteCAD
  • Almost AutoCADWorks
  • AutomaticCAD
  • NoSoAutomaticCAD

Any other suggestions or votes for any of these?